


yesterday is retroactive

by Anonymous



Category: Mosquitoes - Kirkwood
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Character Study, Control Issues, Drunken sex, F/M, Light Bondage, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Sequential Logic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21818512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: ‘in the end, the experiment was uncontrolled, and the scientists were drunk, in darkness in love in exhaustion in a rented room as chaos began to order itself inside you into –’
Relationships: Alice/The Boson (Mosquitoes)
Kudos: 2
Collections: Anonymous





	yesterday is retroactive

and then the hotel room door slams shut and it’s just you and me and the cosmos, the most perfect _ménage à trois_ or maybe it’s always only ever been a madness shared by two (or three, if you count the Experiment. can you really count it if there’s no consciousness to speak of yet? hard to tell. let’s check back later.) and we are starlight and potential just the two of us and I can see the enormous amount of energy burning in you and it just about takes my breath away.

No protection needed, not now. We’ve constructed the hypothesis and done the research (a maddening amount of it, really) and now all that’s left to do is gather the materials – not that there’s much of those – and conduct the method, and we have the method down to a fine art already.

You laugh at something I say that I can’t remember the details of and I love you and I love you and –

The enormity of what we’re about to do surrounds us and I don’t think you can see it or hear it but I can and I do. It’s as loud as a train coming into a station – deafening, terrifying – as loud as the sound of you breathing in the dim fluorescent light of our room – as loud as the hum of mosquitoes and the sound of our heartbeats growing louder,

and so the experiment begins.

⁂

I don’t even especially like sex. Did I ever tell you that? If you were actually here I’d be able to tell you it now, but you aren’t although there’s you right now standing in front of me, but I don’t think you can hear me can you? Mm no I don’t think you can, or maybe you’re just pretending, or – no, either way. In theory, it’s exquisite, but I’d love to live in theory because everything works in theory and wouldn’t that be nice?

In theory it’s exquisite but in reality it’s messy and undignified and there’s so many variables that are just, they’re impossible to control no matter how carefully we plan it out, and you don’t seem to care about that as much as I do and that makes me angry. Not breaking-things, scare-the-life-out-of-you, scare-the-sense-out-of-myself angry, just low bubbling quietly simmering anger like reheated soup that I can easily put the lid on and shove to the back of my mind to forget about forever.

I don’t like sex but you do, and my dislike is only just a mild sort of thing and love is twelfth on the list of Most Powerful Forces and I really do adore you quite a lot, empirically speaking. So obviously drinking ourselves to the point of giggly tipsiness, to the edge of the cliff where we lost some of our inhibitions and I could just _stop thinking so hard about all of this_ was the only way that it could ever have happened. The problem with that being, of course, that these events and that experiment are blurred and fogged over and impossible to define and collect in my mind properly and after the fact and when I sit down to write the lab report up in detail I secondguess myself so often that five minutes later my hair is in my hands and there’s blood in my hands too and my throat is hoarse and you’re trying to ask me what’s wrong but there’s no right answer to that. And oh do I hate it when there’s no right answer.

Those uncontrolled, unexplained variables are tricky things, you know.

⁂

I unclasp your bra at the back, it takes me a few tries but I manage it well enough third time round and together we wiggle and squirm our way inelegantly out of our clothes and the lights go off like dying stars and we fall into bed together and then the experiments begin in earnest. And that really is what they are, experiments, because the end goal is something solid and substantial and we’ll know when we’ve done it, but the night is long and the endpoint is undefined more or less and there’s so much that we can do before we reach it.

There are two ways for this experiment to end, and if it doesn’t end like we want it to, we can repeat it as many times as necessary without worrying about past results affect future iterations. Those are always the best sorts of experiment.

Here’s what I’ll remember later:

your tongue, trailing up my neck, kissing at my pulse point, nipping at my earlobe,

my fingers, skimming up your belly, twisting up into your body, making you buck and squirm in something like delighted ecstasy,

stars in motion in the snatched moments that I blink and closed my eyes, concurrent with the stars in a sky that we can’t see far far above us,

breathing in the darkness, both far too loud and far too soft.

Later, I’ll tell myself, _this is what happened, this is what we did,_ but even at the time it’s hard to be sure.

⁂

I’m coming back for you, you know. It’s only a matter of time. Not just you, him as well, because there’s so many words left unsaid between the all of us. Or maybe I’ve already come back and I just never noticed. 

Damn it. _Damn it all._

There’s this thing I used to do, a thing that you really liked, both in bed and out of bed and the million other subset states of _in_ and _out_ that existed in the glorious chaotic mundanity of our day-to-day lives. The hand-to-the-back-of-the-neck thing. It doesn’t exactly have a name, never really needed one. It’s grounding in its simplicity. Just a touch, just a squeeze. You told me that it saves you, pulls you back from the brink when you’re overwhelmed with Fear and Terror no matter how ridiculous that sounds. You tried to do it for me once, just the once, when I was having a yes well never mind that, what’s important is that it didn’t work quite so well for me. And afterwards you said you felt ridiculous doing it, so that’s that. What it means, I still don’t know.

⁂

So then it’s

it’s my hands in your hair, tangling and tugging you back as you laugh and pant and bite hungrily at my lips and or it’s

it’s you pinning me against the wall, fingers digging into the soft flesh of my shoulders as I do the same to you where it will certainly leave bruises on the both of us tomorrow and or it’s

but no that can’t be right because

the order of events that have already occurred clearly state

that you bound my hands to the headboard nearly fifteen minutes ago.

⁂

and frankly being stuck up here right here right now is nothing short of _maddening,_ I mean honestly – no, _honestly –_ all of you have absolutely no idea whatsoever what I’m talking about _still._ You think you would have gotten at least some semblance of a. no. all right no maybe you’re right maybe i’m being just a bit, just maybe slightly a little unfair so, let’s. let’s take this from the top, or the top of the next page, anyway. all right, okay, all right.

so, the world ending, right. that’s one thing. Hopefully you’ve had the opportunity to come to terms with that little, shall we say, that little inconvenience, that little drawback to our existence – because frankly there always had to be one, life and existence and _SANITY_ being terminated at some point is inevitable so. hey no stop giving me those looks, that’s just how it is.

The world will end, has ended, is ending, that’s fine, that’s good, let’s strike that right off the syllabus and move right down to the Next Most Important Thing which is which is how to see things coming. Because oh yes let me tell you being blindsided by events you never saw coming your way is buckets and buckets of neverending delightful fun. that’s sarcasm, of course. So, how to identify it? – it’s really quite simple there’s really quite an easy place to start

Sequential Logic

(you do know what that is yes, yes? i’m not just wasting my time and oh for god’s sake all right. all right fine, let’s look at it a bit like this then)

elevators, you know elevators right? Good, there’s still some hope for you yet. all right, so, pretend you're in a really tall building, and you're on the seventh floor. simple enough. And you want to go up to floor ten, so you get into the elevator so you can do just that but and see here’s the thing but the elevator doesn't have floor numbers that you press to get to certain places it just has up and down and you can only go up or down one floor at a time. yes, this is a stretch i’m doing the best i can with the little i have and HONESTLY just please LISTEN i don’t have time for

all right so

so you press up and that’s input and the elevator receives that and its tiny machine brain computes and thinks _yes we’ll go up one_ and now you’re on floor eight simple as that. but say you’re on a different floor, just because you give it the same input doesn’t mean that you’ll end up at the same destination

you need to know what’s already happened in order to be able to proceed. the elevator can only function as it was built if it’s aware of the floor it’s already on which is information determined by previous input from other users and and and past performance is the most reliable indicator of future outcomes, contrary to popular belief

seeing what happens next is simple enough. you just need to be aware of what has happened previously, that’s the tricky – no, see, that’s the tricky bit. you just need to – You need to – you need to _know._

foresight. hindsight. all the same really when you’re looking at it all from a fifth-dimensional angle

oh damn it all, damn it all to whatever god you’re supposed to believe in, oh

i’m doing it again aren’t i

⁂

Your teeth, my neck, I think you think I think you manage to draw blood. What remains burns like battery acid, hot and caustic but there’s no time for any of that because I’m already seizing your legs and tugging them open with heated urgency. My mouth closes on you, and you gasp and squirm and make the loveliest noises

but that can’t be right because my hands are still up at the headboard, bound with my belt, well, all right, maybe it was the other way around

and there’s a mosquito in the hotel room with us. I can hear it buzzing at the edge of my perception, can hear it whining against the constrains of the walls as it bounces around like an unobserved particle in a collider, except it’s there and I’m observing it but only absently, distantly

I penetrate you with my tongue, except maybe I don’t, and you don’t tell me oh god yes and keep going keep going, except maybe you do.

Either way, the end result’s the same: I bury myself in you, and you let out a cry like a bird that’s been struck down from the sky by God’s will, and maybe that’s how this experiment ends or maybe that’s my mind playing tricks on me again. I wonder if mosquitoes scream when we strike them down. It’s strange the things you think of in the aftermath.

⁂

We didn’t talk about your sister. We never talked about your sister. You didn’t talk about her because she means everything to you, and I didn’t bring her up because she means nothing to me.

I could always tell when you were thinking about your sister, because you’d get all sad and hunched and bite at your lip like you Just Didn’t Know What To Do and although I never quite knew how to talk to you about it I always knew just how to distract you and redirect you onto a new path so you could just stop thinking about it. And that happened too many times to count, so many times it became familiar then habit then ritual and if I’m remembering it all right I think that may have been how the experiment began in the first place.

⁂

okay but no no really when you think about it ( _laughter_ ) no no lis, lis, a _lice_ come on get off me for a second please oh ( _giggling, rustling fabric_ ) you’re just being ridiculous now okay i know i know if you’re not allowed to be silly in bed where else yes yes all of that. now can i just, good, okay, thank you. mmm. okay now

what i was trying to say before you, well, i was just thinking, because

it’s not like tiny me or tiny you or tiny anyone you know – kids, just kids – ever sat down and thought to themselves _I want to be a theoretical physicist when I grow up, that’s my absolute dream, that’s what I’m aiming for,_ that just doesn’t really happen. and it’s probably because nobody tells kids about physics and that’s a crime because physics is pretty fucking great all things considered and

_(low murmur)_

yes I agree, tiny you declaring delusions of grandeur in the key of experimental physics is a frankly delightful image, but no that’s not quite what, it’s more, it’s more like, what did you want to be as a kid? because Obviously we’ve got quite a few physicists on this planet we live on and a large amount of professions that no kid in their right mind would ever want to be and it’s, it’s all just, we don’t all get to do what we want do we. there’s always going to be some great change we can’t predict and honestly just like on a very conceptual level there’s

yeah yes yes this is absolutely what I want to be doing right now, it’s, we’re not, it’s fine. this isn’t about that this is about me realizing some things about life.

wait hm

_(rustle)_

hey

hey, lis, hey – alice?

you know it might just be me rewriting past input again but actually I think that I might have wanted to be a physicist when I was back in third grade, there was, there was this book at the library and you know I spent a lot of time at the library back then, dad and everything you know, and

I don’t know. just a thought. you get strange and philosophical when you’re drunk, huh

it’s funny because, because, you know, the mind. the mind lies.

lis – alice?

Alice?

– oh

i’ll let you sleep then. probably doesn’t matter as much as i thought it would, that’s just, no, it’s all right. just you rest, i’ll see you tomorrow

mmm all right. alright. goodnight alice

⁂

well, it’s a simple enough proof if you know the theory, and most people don’t, so. That explains that, really. See, I’ll just write it down for you, I know it like the back of my hand

_To every ω-consistent recursive class c of formulae there correspond recursive class-signs r, such that neither v Gen r nor Neg (v Gen r) belongs to Flg(c) (where v is the free variable of r)._

there. not so complicated after all. Hey,

you know what’s funny? Some days I think I might actually be dead. I mean, how would I ever know? I could have burnt to a crisp in a house fire or electrocuted myself on faulty wiring or just straight-up burst into far too many pieces like an apple that someone squeezed just a bit too hard, or melted like an ice floe or maybe my body just turned on itself one day and burnt and rotted itself all the way through from the inside out, and but either way I’m dead and I just haven’t noticed it yet. I just can’t remember. The memory is a tricky thing, the mind lies to itself all the time for protection or just for fun.

There’s some things I can hold onto, at least.

erase previous input to account for new, unexpected variables –

this statement is a lie –

there are five ways for the world to end –

the human immunodeficiency virus cannot be spread by mosquitoes –

oh Alice I wish I was sorry for leaving you–

one two three four five

– _this never happened._


End file.
